poverty and equality a remedy for class egoism. So great was the
cogency of his writing that Icaria became more than a mere vision to
hundreds of thousands in those years of social ferment and democratic
aspirations. From a hundred sources the demand arose to translate the
book into action. Cabet thereupon framed a constitution and sought the
means of founding a real Icaria. After consulting Robert Owen, he
unfortunately fell into the clutches of some Cincinnati land
speculators and chose a site for his colony in the northeastern part
of Texas. When the announcement was made in his paper, _Le Populaire_,
the responses were so numerous that Cabet believed that "more than a
million coöperators" were eager for the experiment.

In February, 1848, sixty-nine young men, all carefully selected
volunteers, were sent forth from Havre as the vanguard of the
contemplated exodus. But the movement was halted by the turn of great
events. Twenty days after the young men sailed, the French Republic
was proclaimed, and in the fervor and distraction of this immediate
political victory the new and distant Utopia seemed to thousands less
alluring than it had been before. The group of young volunteers,
however, reached America. After heart-rending disillusionment in the
swamps and forests of Louisiana and on the raw prairies of Texas, they
made their way back to New Orleans in time to meet Cabet and four
hundred Icarians, who arrived early in 1849. The Gallic instinct for
factional differences soon began to assert itself in repeated division
and subdivision on the part of the idealists. One-half withdrew at New
Orleans to work out their individual salvation. The remainder followed
Cabet to the deserted Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois, where vacant
houses offered immediate shelter and where they enjoyed an interval of
prosperity. The French genius for music, for theatricals, and for
literature relieved them from the tedium that characterized most